"The Halloween Man" written by Douglas Clegg, told by Wings0nite...

It is a tale that will chill your bones, and leave you with a mental image...
one you may be very sorry to conjure up.

There was this young wife and mother, her name was Ellen.
Ellen's husband was a heavy drinker and took to beating his wife after he had a "few"
Ellen was insecure and put up with the beatings, but when he began beating her boy
who was only 3 years old, she knew she had to get out.
Ellen went to her mother and managed to borrow some money so she could take her child away where he would not find them
So one morning after her husband left for the tavern Ellen slipped away with the boy and headed for the train station
Ellen and her son disembarked the train 200 miles later in a small town called Clearfield
because a fellow female passanger
had told Ellen of a kind family, the Millers, that would take in homeless people and help them get a fresh start
Ellen found the Millers' farmhouse in no time and found that these people were indeed loving folk and they showed her to a clean spare room for her and her boy
Early the next morning, Ellen awoke and went to the bathroom to clean up for the day.
What she saw put the fear of God into her!
"she saw three children" in the hallway "standing half-naked in the darkness"
"one was a girl of about eight or nine, and one a boy of five"
"the littlest on barely more than a baby" of two.
"She noticed that at the edges of their mouths, thread had been sewn"
"little black threads, their ears and nostrils all sewn shut"
"Then the little girl reached up and drew the thread from her mouth, humming sounds coming from her"
"A small green fly crawled up to the edge of her lips and spread it's shiny wings and flew..."
Ellen was terrified! She ran back into her room and grabbed her son who was still asleep and dashed out of the house
Mr Miller was in the front of the house
She nearly ran into him
Those children she said to him   How could you do that to them?
"they are the silent children" he said
But what? why?
He looked at her with sadness in his eyes
My wife he said slowly
she and me we tried to have children for many years
She wanted a family, I wanted a family
and it was killing her, I had to do something
So I figured that children die all the time and well...
I dug them up right after they were buried
I filled their bodies with flies and sew up their mouths so the flies cannot escape
then the flies lay their larve and then the maggots...well, they move
makes the children seem alive again
And well, Maddy the wife loves the silent ones
they are her children
the ones she could never have
Ellen ran all the way back to the train station
She boarded the train back home to her loathsome husband
Then 3 months later as Mr. Miller is out in his yard he sees a figure walking towards his house
It is Ellen and in her arms is cradled her dead son
"Mr. Miller?"  she says
"Please make my son alive again. I understand now.... please, make him live"
THE END